
The Waiting Game
The Untold Story of the Women Who Served the Tudor Queens
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Narrated by:
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Nicola Clark
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Karen Cass
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By:
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Nicola Clark
About this listen
Every Tudor Queen had ladies-in-waiting. They were her confidantes and her chaperones. Only the Queen's ladies had the right to enter her most private chambers, spending hours helping her to get dressed and undressed, caring for her clothes and jewels, listening to her secrets. But they also held a unique power. A quiet word behind the scenes, an appropriately timed gift, a well-negotiated marriage alliance were all forms of political agency wielded expertly by women.
The Waiting Game explores the daily lives of ladies-in-waiting, revealing the secrets of recruitment, costume, what they ate, where (and with whom) they slept. We meet María de Salinas, who traveled to England with Catherine of Aragon when just a teenager and spied for her during the divorce from Henry VIII. Anne Boleyn's lady-in-waiting Jane Parker was instrumental in the execution of not one, but two queens. And maid-of-honor Anne Basset kept her place through the last four consorts, negotiating the conflicting loyalties of her birth family, her mistress the Queen, and even the desires of the King himself.
As Henry changed wives—and changed the very fabric of the country's structure besides—these women had to make choices about loyalty that simply didn't exist before. The Waiting Game is the first time their vital story has been told.
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Story
The six wives of Henry VIII have become defined in a popular sense not so much by their lives as by the way these lives ended. But, as Antonia Fraser conclusively proves, they were rich and feisty characters. They may have been victims of Henry's obsession with a male heir, but they displayed considerable strength and intelligence at a time when their sex supposedly possessed little of either. Inevitably there was great rivalry and jealously between them. The story Antonia Fraser tells is romantic and cruel, funny and sad, dramatic and enthralling.
By: Antonia Fraser
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Marriage, Tudor Style
- Love, Hate & Scandal
- By: Sylvia Barbara Soberton
- Narrated by: Julia Anthony
- Length: 4 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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The newly-wed Anne Hastings faced her husband's wrath when her affair with William Compton was made public. Mary Tudor married to satisfy her brother's political need to ally with France, but when her decrepit royal husband died, she married the dashing Charles Brandon for love. William Parr, humiliated by his wife's extramarital affair, sought a divorce to marry the woman he loved.
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The Cardinal
- A Novel of Love and Power
- By: Alison Weir
- Narrated by: Rosalyn Landor
- Length: 17 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Cardinal Thomas Wolsey enjoyed one of the most meteoric careers in history. His rise from humble beginnings coincided with young Henry VIII’s ascension to the throne in 1509. The two grew to be cherished friends, and by 1515 Wolsey, now a cardinal, had become the controlling figure in all matters of church and state.
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Did not like narrator. Depressing
- By P. Walsh on 07-03-25
By: Alison Weir
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The Lost Queen
- The Surprising Life of Catherine of Braganza: The Forgotten Queen Who Bridged Two Worlds
- By: Sophie Shorland
- Narrated by: Ruth Lass
- Length: 8 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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A long-overlooked figure in history, Catherine has a crucial place in the history of the British Empire: she may have failed to produce an heir to the throne, but her marriage to Charles in 1662 marked a key turning point in Britain's imperial ascendancy, for part of her dowry was Bombay, Britain's first territory of the Indian subcontinent. Catherine also was highly influential in the worlds of fashion, Baroque art and music, and food and culture. She popularized tea drinking, bringing England's national drink into fashion for the first time.
By: Sophie Shorland
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The Final Year of Anne Boleyn
- By: Natalie Grueninger
- Narrated by: Polly Lee
- Length: 10 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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There are few women in English history more famous or controversial than Queen Anne Boleyn. In this vivid and engaging account of the triumphant and harrowing final year of Queen Anne Boleyn's life, the author reveals a very human portrait of a brilliant, passionate, and complex woman.
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About time
- By Naomi on 03-31-24
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Normal Women
- Nine Hundred Years of Making History
- By: Philippa Gregory
- Narrated by: Philippa Gregory, Clare Corbett, Tania Rodrigues, and others
- Length: 27 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Did you know that there are more penises than women in the Bayeux Tapestry? That the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 was started and propelled by women who were protesting a tax on women? Or that Charles Darwin believed not just that women were naturally inferior to men, but that they’d evolve to become ever more inferior? These are just a few of the startling findings you will learn from listening to Philippa Gregory’s Normal Women. In this ambitious book, she tells the story of England over 900 years, for the very first time placing women—some fifty per cent of the population—center stage.
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Well researched
- By Tom Masters on 05-31-24
By: Philippa Gregory
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The Forgotten Tudor Women
- Anne Seymour, Jane Dudley & Elisabeth Parr
- By: Sylvia Barbara Soberton
- Narrated by: Virtual Voice
- Length: 7 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Anne Seymour, Jane Dudley and Elisabeth Parr all have their own unique stories to tell. Born into the most turbulent period of England’s history, these women’s lives interplayed with the great dramas of the Tudor age, and their stories deserve to be told independently of their husbands. Anne Seymour served all of Henry VIII’s six wives and brushed with treason more than once, but she died in her bed as a wealthy old matriarch. Jane Dudley was a wife and mother who fought for her family until her last breath. Elisabeth Parr, sister-in-law of Queen Katherine Parr, married for love and ...
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Queen of the North
- By: Anne O'Brien
- Narrated by: Beth Eyre
- Length: 14 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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1399: England’s crown is under threat. King Richard II holds on to his power by an ever-weakening thread, with exiled Henry of Lancaster back to reclaim his place on the throne. For Elizabeth Mortimer, there is only one rightful King - her eight-year-old nephew, Edmund. Only he can guarantee her fortunes and protect her family’s rule over the precious northern lands bordering Scotland.
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This book deserves a limited tv series!
- By Anonymous User on 11-19-18
By: Anne O'Brien
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Catherine de' Medici
- The Life and Times of the Serpent Queen
- By: Mary Hollingsworth
- Narrated by: Rachel Bavidge
- Length: 15 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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History is rarely kind to women of power, but few have had their reputations quite so brutally shredded as Catherine de’ Medici, Italian-born queen of France and influential mother of three successive French kings during that country’s long sequence of sectarian wars in the second half of the sixteenth century.
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Don’t bother
- By Anonymous User on 12-05-24
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Bess of Hardwick
- Empire Builder
- By: Mary S. Lovell
- Narrated by: Jennifer M. Dixon
- Length: 20 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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From the author of The Sisters, a chronicle of the most brutal, turbulent, and exuberant period of England's history. Bess Hardwick, the fifth daughter of an impoverished Derbyshire nobleman, did not have an auspicious start in life. Widowed at sixteen, she nonetheless outlived four monarchs, married three more times, built the great house at Chatsworth, and died one of the wealthiest and most powerful women in English history.
By: Mary S. Lovell
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Henrietta Maria
- The Warrior Queen Who Divided a Nation
- By: Leanda de Lisle
- Narrated by: Daphne Kouma
- Length: 12 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Henrietta Maria is British history's most reviled queen consort. Condemned in her lifetime as a traitor and adulteress, she remains in popular memory the wife who wore the breeches in her marriage, the woman who turned her husband Catholic (and so caused the English Civil War), and a cruel mother. This clear-eyed biography unpicks the myths and considers the story from her point of view. A portrait emerges of a woman whose closest friends included Puritans as well as Catholics, who crossed swords with Cardinal Richelieu, and led the anti-Spanish faction at the English court.
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Really good
- By Stacey Kay Schwab on 07-17-24
By: Leanda de Lisle
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The Lives and Deaths of the Princesses of Hesse
- The curious destinies of Queen Victoria's granddaughters
- By: Frances Welch
- Narrated by: Jilly Bond
- Length: 9 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Drawing on hundreds of previously unseen letters from the sisters as well as from their grandmother Queen Victoria, The Princesses of Hesse takes us on a sweeping journey across the tumultuous landscape of the turn of the century - from the dramas of the Russian Court to the Russian Revolution, and through both World Wars in which they often found themselves on opposing sides.
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Fascinating
- By Franchella on 03-07-25
By: Frances Welch
The incredible danger of life in the court of Henry VIII.
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Meticulous historical account
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A Hidden History of Women
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comforting, empowering
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One of the best!
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Fascinating listen
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History as a story
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Interesting
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Loved this book!
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Chapter 4
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